The Crisis in a Nutshell: Teachers Battle the Budget

“There is a right way and wrong way to cut spending, and the most important guiding principle I can offer is to minimize the negative impact on students.” —Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

“Even as we reduce school aids, overall we give schools across the state the tools to make up for those reductions with even greater savings through the budget repair bill.” —Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

“I’m not questioning the governor, but I wish he’d be a little bit more definitive about what those tools are.” —Green Bay Superintendent Greg Maass

“Mass firings don’t fix the budget. They say, ‘This is a city that doesn’t care about schools.’ ” —Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

“It’s not one item. It’s not two. They’ve seized the opportunity to go on the attack. They’re going for the jugular.” —Rick Muir, president of the Indiana Federation of Teachers

“Teachers want what’s best for children. The teachers union is an institution built to protect the interests of itself and adults.” —Tony Bennett, Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction

“There are hundreds of millions of Americans that grew up without a Department of Education. And certainly, an argument can be made that they’re better educated than people that have been around since 1977, when that department was created,” —Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste

“I don’t think we can continue to have processes and procedures in place that allow an ineffective teacher to stay in the classroom for years and years.” —Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. schools

“Voters, especially voters with kids in public school, want to keep the best teachers on the job, and to heck with seniority.” —Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute

“Just as some schools are dropout factories, there are teachers that are ignorance factories.” —Chester Finn, Jr., former assistant secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan

“You don’t vilify your union—you bring them to the table and you make them partners, because when you talk to your union leadership, they don’t want to see bad teachers, either.” —Jeffrey Thomas, an assistant superintendent in Arizona